Living Fossil Recovers In Arizona
Posted by: Loren Coleman on May 14th, 2007
Few realize that the pronghorn (Antilocapra americana) is a Pleistocene survivor, a relict from the Ice Ages. It is a unique species and the only surviving member of the family Antilocapridae. The pronghorn was discovered by the Lewis and Clark Expedition, in what today is South Dakota.
For one small population, the endangered subspecies Sonoran pronghorn (Antilocapra americana sonoriensis), occurring only in Arizona and Mexico, their dying population went from almost 140 animals to 21 pronghorns during the drought of 2002. Now the numbers have moved above 100, at the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge in Arizona.
See the article, “Deer-Like Animal Rebounds in Arizona”, for more details. The headline, btw, is terrible. Pronghorns are far from “deer-like.” And they are not antelopes, despite sometimes being called “pronghorn antelopes.” They are a very distinctive and ancient species.
Pronghorns are second only to the cheetah as far as being the world’s fastest land mammal.
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
So if the Pronghorn can survive this long, what else has survived since the Pleistocene? A large bi-pedal ape perhaps?
I have to admit to an undue fondness for these pronghorns. Their connection with the pleistocene and the ancestral cheetahs aside; having lived and worked in the Great Basin I was fascinated by stories of early settlers who’d set up elaborate traps to wipe out tens of thousands of these creatures at a time, burrying them in big trenches, to rid the land of these pesky “goats” which were eating all the grass that was obviously meant for their introduced cattle. It’s been speculated that as well as the need to dodge ancestral cheetahs, their remarkable running ability also enabled them to run from basin to basin, sometimes a distance of 40 or more miles, toward the sight and smell of recent rains and the promise of succulent though sporadic desert greenery.
I wish the cattlemen of the american west would come around to realizing that they’d make a lot more money running thousands of heads of pronghorn in gigantic heards so that tourists would come to see the astonishing sight of 40 thousand pronghorns charging across an american version of Africa’s serengetti plain. Can’t believe it wouldn’t make more money for them than running those poor cattle which are overgrazing and depleting the water table, requiring tons of tax money to ameliorate…while they pay a couple o’ bucks a head for the right to do so.
So if it’s not a deer, and it’s not an antelope, what is it? Just a pronghorn?
Love the look of those horns 🙂
I recall seeing about 20 pronghorn on my way to FLagstaff Az about 20 yrs ago. Baja California is home to a Subspecies, could be as many as 4 subspecies recognized in the western US.
Nice to hear some good news these days.
I’ve never once seen a photo of one until today, what a nice looking creature. ‘Deer like’? Well, i can see the similarities but if they can use that description there then they probably would for a goat as well.
I suppose that pronghorns could be considered to be “living fossils”, in that they are the last surviving species of a family that fluorished from the Miocene right through the Pleistocene. But then every large animal species that survives today survives from the Pleistocene, and all were once part of a much larger and more varied megafauna.Pronghorns are not antelopes, but they are more like antelopes than anything else, so I don’t have a problem with calling them antelopes. Bison aren’t buffaloes either, and pumas aren’t lions, but lots of people call them buffalo and mountain lions.
I wish that the big cheetah-like cats that drove the pronghorn family’s evolution were still around. We’ll never know what they looked like for sure, but I’d guess they were beautiful creatures.
Pronghorns are endangered across their entire range, with some populations at much higher risk than others. But they were very numerous before the introduction of industry and industialized agriculture, and the human population explosion that followed. They are an integral part of the fauna of the American West, and it’s a shame that they have been brought to near extinction to make room for cattle, sheep, and wheat.
All over the world, animals that were very numerous before industrialization, such as the bison and pronghorn in America, and the large African herds, are on the way out. Maybe people will wake up from their complacency about the state of the environment and the animals within it in time to prevent their total extinction.
I wish we’d work towards re-establishing populations of Pleistocene megafauna particularly in the American West. Asian cheetahs and elephants would be a welcome addition to the landscape and are keystone species in their ecology, just as camels had for so long. Maybe cheetahs could control the feral horses (another Pleistocene animal) which are proliferating to such a degree that they’re degrading their range.
Dogu4- I am quite interested in the pronghorns as well, although it is a species I know little about, unfortunately. I thank you and Kittenz for your insightful information. I too would like to see the cheetah reintroduced somehow, but I wonder just how warm the public reception to that would be? Unfortunately, a lot of uneducated people may have the notion that such an animal would be dangerous to livestock, and this negative public image could hinder reintroduction efforts. People want to protect those precious cattle, and I don’t think cheetahs or even elephants would work into their plans. This is one of the hard sells for reintroducing the wolf in Japan, besides the fact that it would be detrimental to any surviving Honshu wolves. The public concerns are mpstly unfounded, of course, but this sort of thing does play a role in the reintroduction efforts.
I also wonder if in this rapidly industrialized world and with shrinking plainsland habitat, does the cheetah still have a chance to thrive in that ecology, or would it quickly be wiped out again? So horses aside, it seems few of the once plentiful prey animals remain, so I am not sure how much of a foothold the cheetah could hope to gain in this habitat the way it is now. And if it is feasible, would its reintroduction be too little too late? Any insights would be appreciated.
It truly is sad the speed with which some North American habitats were actively decimated during industrialization and settlement of the continent. These species went through all that time surviving and evolving, only to be wiped out in a fraction of the time by humans. It really is alarming when one thinks about it. I am sure the sight of vast herds of bison and pronghorn stretching out across the plains would have been a breathtaking sight to be sure. It is too bad we are likely never to have the pleasure of seeing such a majestic thing in our lifetimes.
I don’t give it much chance in today’s adversarial and adamantly ignorant approach to recognizing nature’s role in our security and well-being, though looking back over the last 100 years there has been an astonishing turn-around in how some humans, some actually in leadership positions, have used modern insights to guide our management of the dwindling legacy of treasure we have accumulated in the genes of living organisms as expressed by their incredible diversity.
I’m find great common ground with scientists with a high degree of awareness, such as E.O.Wilson, Jared Diamond, and George Schaller who have written at length about our dilemma in perceptions about the wild world.
Most resentment from people over the reintroduction of animals, predators in particular, are due to the people’s lack of understanding, to be expected since we teach them so little about it. Show ’em how they can make money and preserve the essentials of their lifestyles by preserving diversity and intact ecosystems and soon they themselves will insist that it was their idea in the first place.
kittenz, how wonderful are your revelations. If you are not a biologist you certainly missed your calling!
Evolution aside, these creatures are well adapted to North America, despite how anyone believes they came to be here, if America would only set aside a place for these creatures to abide I’m sure they would live and thrive.
Truly, man’s exploitation and interruption of their natural rhythms is why these creatures are in decline.
To say nothing of the even worse extinctions that occurred around 10,000 years ago…
“So if it’s not a deer, and it’s not an antelope, what is it? Just a pronghorn?”
as noted it belongs to the family of Antilocaprids.
Antilo = suffix denoting antelopes, their kith and kin;
+caprid = as of or pertaining to goatdom.
plainly put, an Antilocaprid is an “Antelope-goat”.
in some palaeontological texts, Antilocaprids are an ancient stock of ungulates that eventually differentiated into Antelopes and Goats.
unfortunately, taxonomists sometimes confuse matters and proceed to classify beasts with little or no regard for the fossil record:
in modern taxonomy, antelopes and goats are members of a separate family, the Bovidae (including cattle).
the implication to the taxonomical spin is: “interesting similarities, probably convergent evolution”
and so the swift Pronghorn is either:
a throwback to a form before goats and antelopes had emerged from the ancestral stock; or
a fellow ungulate with a curious blend of characteristics co-incidentally reminiscent of antelopes and goats.
shall we just call it a long-legged Jackalope?